Cinderella and the Incredible Techno-slippers by Charlotte and Adam Guillain

Ya'll already know about my weaknesses for British TV/period dramas and Jane Austen adaptations. But now I have another confession to make. I also have a weakness for fairy tales. They are a fascinating genre to study, which I did in college when I did an independent study with a professor on fairy tales. That professor now teaches a course on fairy tales that shares some of the same readings we did in our independent study. My undergraduate honors thesis was a case study of the Snow White fairy tale. I'm not sure if you're aware, but there are hundreds of versions of most fairy tales across the world and dating back hundreds of years. If you're interested in learning more about the study of fairy tales, some authors who have written books about the subject include Jack Zipes and Maria Tatar. You can also check out the website SurLaLune Fairy Tales; it's a great place to start because it has almost 50 different fairy tales annotated, including histories, different versions, and illustrations.

We recently acquired two new easy reader books that share the Cinderella fairy tale with a modern twist. I'm reviewing one this week, and I'll post a review for the other one next week; so be sure to check back!

Cinderella and the Incredible Techno-slippers is written by Charlotte and Adam Guillain and illustrated by Becka Moor. The thing I like best about this book is that it includes a very brief history and summary of the Cinderella tale that the story is based upon. [Note: apparently this book is listed under several titles, including "Cindy-ella and the Incredible Techno-slippers" which is its listing in our OPAC and "Cinderella and the Amazing Techno-slippers" which is its listing on Amazon, even though the title on the front cover and title page of the book is Cinderella and the Incredible Techno-slippers. I don't know why.]

In this version Cinderella is an intrepid inventor and skateboarder ever beleaguered by the unreasonable demands of a mean and lazy stepmother. The stepmother makes Cinderella clean up around the apartment and after the stepmother's messy twin children, who are pretty spoiled. This hardly leaves any time for Cinderella to work on her inventions, but Cinderella solves this problem by inventing some robots to do her cleaning for her. Meanwhile, Cinderella's dad is also an inventor who works at the local toy factory. The twist on this story is that Cinderella ends up saving the day with one of her inventions that puts the toy factory back on the map and prevents its closure--and she lands a job as an inventor at the factory as a result!

Some random thoughts I had:

--Apparently Cinderella's dad is such a workaholic that he's never around because he doesn't notice how his wife is treating his daughter, and so he doesn't do anything about it. Pretty much he's useless. And useless men annoy me.

--It is beyond me that the stepmother wants to try on the slipper--she's already married (to a soon-to-be-out-of-work inventor), and if she's too lazy to take care of the apartment and the twins, then she's too lazy to want to work at the factory.

--Review by Ms. Angie

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A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

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